


Come to me, soothing sleep

by Paleandinteresting



Category: Holby City
Genre: 48 hours, F/F, berena - Freeform, minimal angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-31 15:33:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15122459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paleandinteresting/pseuds/Paleandinteresting
Summary: That 48 hours after Primum Non Nocere.The title is from Handel’s opera Ottone, recorded by Kathleen Ferrier in 1945.https://youtu.be/1EENyl0Q-sE





	Come to me, soothing sleep

**Author's Note:**

> This picks up the story, one story, at least, 20 minutes after the credits rolled at the end of part two.
> 
> There are threads to be pulled...

Serena leans her head against the wall, closing her eyes, her bunch of house keys, car keys, office keys held loosely in her hand, her thumb worrying the rather gaudy fob Ellie made at school for her a decade or more ago. Bernie eases herself out of her coat, barely perceptibly relaxing just a little, now they’re home. At last. 

“You know,” Serena murmurs, eyes still closed, eyebrows arching. “My 25 year old self wouldn’t have paused for breath. I’d have pounced on you before we were even through the front door.”

“Six ways from Sunday before we’d made it half way up the stairs?”

“Something like that.”

“But?”

Serena pauses, slowly opens her eyes, toying with her keys before, with a well-practised pivot, she lobs them into the bowl on the hall table. “Is it awful that I just fancy a cup of tea and a sit down?” Serena sighs. “With you, of course.” She pauses, smiles to herself. “I still can’t quite believe you’re really here. Here at all. I didn’t think I’d see you for weeks. And you’re still here after everything I said.” There’s a hitch in her voice. Then a shudder. Eyes raised to the hall light. “And very nearly didn’t say.”

She takes two short steps to close the space between them, wraps her arms around Bernie’s waist, finding Bernie’s shirt untucked just enough to slide her hand underneath, to stroke her lower back. Warm, firm, forgiving. Nearly familiar. She rests her forehead against Bernie’s shoulder. Places a single kiss to her chest. Bernie curls her arm around Serena. Holds her steady. Rests her chin on Serena’s head. They stand like that for whole minutes.

Bernie’s clear, certain voice cuts through the quiet. “You get changed. I’ll put the kettle on. Meet you in the garden in ten.” A question or an instruction? Either way, they ease apart and set to, dividing and conquering in a way that might have become habit all those months ago, when they were just beginning. Beginning to become more than a sum of their parts. Neither stops to wonder if they can find that easiness again. If easiness is what they want. What they need. What the other wants, needs.

A quarter of an hour later (it never takes ten minutes), and Bernie sits heavily on the wooden bench at the back door. She sets the two, slightly over-filled, and now slightly spilt mugs of tea on the table. She has changed into civvies. No longer the army medic, the NHS consultant, the clinical lead. Just Bernie. Dog-tired, moderately jet-lagged, attempting to delay lighting the fag she’s been rolling between her fingers for the past five minutes. She’d packed hastily before leaving for the airport this morning, and her limited wardrobe is more suited to the heady heat of Nairobi than here. But as luck would have it, a heatwave had arrived and, despite the hour, the air is still warm. The flagstones beneath her bare feet have absorbed the day’s sun.

She’s glad to stop, but her head is pounding from the strain of the past 24 hours. She’s reminded of stepping out of a loud, packed, throbbing nightclub into the early morning quiet of the University town she called home for five years. A habit that, unlike the fags, she’d dropped soon after she qualified. The details are fuzzy after all this time, but that thud in her ears, her head. The thrill of daring to hold hands. Oh, that memory had been replayed a time or two.

She’s jolted from her thoughts by the sound of the stereo in the kitchen coming to life. She can just make out the cd tray opening, then a loud “fuck” from Serena as the disc she’s chosen spills out of its case to the floor. A moment later, and calm is restored. Kathleen Ferrier’s voice drifts through to her in the garden. Bernie breathes a contented sigh, remembering the night they’d discovered their shared love of the singer, Serena taken aback that Bernie wasn’t quite the musical illiterate she’d supposed. They had traded anecdotes and found that their fathers had both been fans when they were young men. And so one avenue of conversation had given way to another, and another, as they slowly learnt each other, their pasts, a few more pieces in the jigsaw.

Serena wanders out, flicking off the kitchen light as she comes. “Got a light for these candles?” she asks, nodding towards the collection of jam jars on the table. “Sorry, yes, of course. Don’t know why I didn’t think to do it already. Sorry.”

Bernie stands quickly to reach the furthest away candle. Too quickly as it turns out, her thighs knocking the table, spilling more tea, the splashes just missing her feet. “Bollocks.” She stays standing, recovering her balance, lighting the first of the candles. “I’d be careful if I were you. Over-tired, mildly dehydrated, running low on nicotine. A dangerous combination. Anything could happen.”

“Oh, but I rather like the sound of that,” Serena says, staccato, as she sits on the bench, running the tips of her fingers along the backs of Bernie’s legs, barely straying past the hem of her linen shorts.

“Steady now, Campbell. I’ve got a naked flame here. Drink your tea before I spill any more or - worse, let’s be honest - it gets cold.”

Bernie sits back down, her job done. Shadows dance against the garden wall, playing with the clambering honeysuckle and rose, rampant at last now that summer has arrived in earnest.

She turns to Serena, finally taking her in.

“Um?”

“Yes, Bernie?”

Feigning outrage, Bernie replies, “Serena Wendy Campbell, what are you playing at? I put it to you that you are wearing a rather revealing, some might even go so far as to say immodest, silk dressing gown. You know very well I have a thing for you in silk.” 

She begins to play with the smooth, cool lapel. She’s on a roll now.

“...and despite your assertions to the contrary less than, oh, half an hour ago, you might be trying to tempt me to wonder, and perhaps find out, what, if anything, you’re wearing besides.”

All the while, her hand is drifting towards one end of the dressing gown belt, which she now oh-so-slowly pulls.

“Well, a woman’s entitled to change her mind....”


End file.
